A leading medical ethicist in the UK says voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia should be legalised in Britain.

Professor Len Doyal, Emeritus Professor of Medical Ethics at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University, London, believes that as doctor assisted deaths are taking place on a regular and recurring basis in the UK, it is better that they are regulated.

Professor Doyal who has been a member of the medical ethics committee of the British Medical Association for nine years, says that when doctors withdraw life-sustaining treatment such as feeding tubes from severely incompetent patients, it should morally be recognised for what it is, euthanasia where death is foreseen with certainty.

Professor Doyal is also critical of Lord Joffe’s Assisted Dying Bill, which would make it legal to prescribe drugs that a terminally ill person could take to end their life, which Doyal says does not go far enough.

Lord Joffe is a former human rights lawyer and a former chairman of Oxfam, and he has estimated that as many as 650 people would use the medication every year in the UK.

Although doctors may prefer to couch their decision in terms such as ‘alleviating suffering’, the withdrawal of life sustaining treatment from severely incompetent patients is morally equivalent to active euthanasia says Doyal.

Professor Doyal says the irony is that much of the debate about euthanasia has been focussed on competent patients when the withdrawal of feeding tubes, ventilators or antibiotics from incompetent patients may well result in a slow, painful and incomprehensible death that could be avoided through the legalisation of non-voluntary active euthanasia.

Doyal claims that many supporters of euthanasia remain silent about non-voluntary euthanasia, presumably because they believe that focusing on voluntary euthanasia offers a better chance of legalisation, and in doing so, they ignore important arguments for their own position.

As Doyal states, if doctors are now allowed control, and should be able to exert even more control over the deaths of severely incompetent patients, why should competent patients not be able to control the circumstances of their own deaths if this is what they wish?

Professor Doyal says that proponents of voluntary euthanasia should also support non-voluntary euthanasia under appropriate circumstances and with proper regulation.

‘Dignity in dying should include the legalization of non-voluntary euthanasia’ is published in the June issue (Vol.1) of Clinical Ethics, published quarterly by the Royal Society of Medicine.